I Have Become
by TheAllPowerfulOz
Summary: "I can't explain, you would not understand. This is not how I am..." The End of the World.


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**I Have Become…**

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The sky was burning.

The night glowing eerily red, stars blotted out by black cloud cover.

The wind brought no relief, the earth's dying breath smelling of chemical fires, death and disease. Screams in the distance… Gunshots and silence.

A siren sounded and shiny black Suburbans flew through the streets, the lone red stripe running across the right hand side of the hood glinting evilly.

He stood alone on the roof, bare feet hanging over the edge of the cracked concrete and brick, dangling midair and free. Staring outward without seeing, focused on the horizon, ships burning in the ocean. Ash falling like snow from fires near and far away. Mixing into a pale gray haze around everything. It was all futile. All useless. Fighting an end that was inevitable, denying something that would wipe you from the face of the planet without a second thought.

His hair whipped around, slashing at his cheeks and eyes. Longer than he remembered it being yesterday. Of course yesterday he'd been someone else. Yesterday he'd been lying on his bed staring at the stone ceiling the window open and dry cold night air blowing in off the desert. His chest bare, riddled with sweat, throat numb and coated with the aftertaste of opium, arms outstretched, hands empty where they dangled loose and free in the air, a hollow smile on his face while God, or whoever was pulling the strings and laughed at him. Because now he understood and accepted the hell the world would become. Knew there wasn't anything he could do about it and all effort would be wasted and only make defeat that much more painful.

The Eye called to him where he'd let it drop to the rug like a rotten piece of fruit, staring at him, speaking in a soft mother like voice, truly innocent because it knew only what it was and nothing of the will or desires of man.

He asked 'why, what, how' and it told him… And now he wished only for ignorance. Wished to forget to unsee, but no matter what he did, or how much he drank it wouldn't leave him.

Curiosity is the only true evil.

"Curriosity has bettered this world! Where would we be without innovation! Bashing one another about the head with sticks and stones!" The blonde raged at him, the lines on his face from age creating canals for his tears, eyes that were once so lively and happy now bloodshot and dying. "Curiosity has given me the ability to create such things that I can share the world's beauty! That I can see life and hold it still in the palm of my hand!"

"Curiosity has made you think you're god…"

And the blonde slapped him. His lip split and his blood tasted like poison. Like ink…

"GET OUT! I don't know who you are any more! You've changed and you've become someone whose very presence causes me pain! GET OUT!"

The door slammed open behind him, and he heard panting, gasping for fetid breath, but he didn't turn, just kept staring outward, past the ruination, past the crumbled, bent and mangled statue holding aloft her righteous flame, cradling her damned book of death.

"Oh, God… Please, don't move! J-just don't move!"

The wind tore at him. His shirt and hood fluttering around his too slim frame like tents, as if pulled on by the hands of little devils. His eyes stung from the smoke, it had to be the smoke because he had since cried all the tears he could for the world. For what he had done.

His head turned on the pillow, eyes glassy, pupils blown, and gazed emptily up at the man in the door. His hair looked black in the night, despite the fact he knew it was peppered lightly at his temples now, the same as his beard. Thin creases radiated from the edges of his hawk like eyes, frown lines from full lips. His empty sleeve pinned delicately up with small careful, loving stitches.

He glowed, blue like the sky, blue like the sea, blue like eyes forever closed in blissful death.

"What are you doing to yourself." It wasn't a question, and his voice was quiet, as if on some level he knew, understood.

He held his hand out, body thinner, wasting away beneath his clothes. He didn't smile. Didn't breathe a word, but his silence said everything.

The Eye gazed at him perpetually. Unblinking, lidless, gold and pure.

"Get down from there… Please, PLEASE!"

He tore his eyes from the horizon, twisting his neck to peer over one thin shoulder, eyes dull and empty, lifeless and yet alive with understanding.

Shaun's face was streaked with soot. The cracked lens of his glasses glinting at odd angles. He pushed his dark hood back with a bandaged hand, then held it out, fingers curved gently, pleadingly. Unthreatening, loving. "Please… Please, Desmond, get down from there."

It was all futile. He knew that, understood and accepted it because there was nothing else he could do to save his sanity. Forcing himself to believe there was any hope was ignorance. Was bliss he was no longer able to attain. Just out of his reach. So close he could almost touch it, Fingers scraping its shell… But unable to grasp it.

Crickets called in the night outside the window, and he stared upward, at a worn, shadowed face, dark eyes glistening with fear, sadness and longing. Three things he hadn't felt in so long the words had lost meaning.

"What have you become…"

He smiled and turned his face upward to the red sky, imagining a wide, purple star strewn field. Glittering impossibly like angels on high.

His hand lifted, fingers twitching in a beckoning motion, gentle twitches and his lips curled slightly not a smile, but the opposite of a frown.

"Nothing…"

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_**Comfortably Numb...**_

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